A Collage
by Francis Sinclair
Summary: 'The boy was quiet. Too quiet.' A collage of Tom Marvolo Riddle and Harry James Potter, from their beginnings to their ends. Mirror images, fifty-three years apart. Gen.


Oneshot, character study. There might be more if inspiration strikes.

This is unbeta'd. Reviews very welcome.

* * *

i. - _vox_

The boy was quiet. Too quiet.

Surrounded by infants' cries in the nursery of the orphanage, Cole stared at the black haired newborn in a far corner.

London still rested in the unrelenting clutches of deep winter; they were all wrapped in clothes that were far too meagre, including Cole herself, and though an adult could contain the shudders of deep chill that threatened to overtake them, infants could not. The nursery was alight on screams. But the boy was quiet.

A lull came around; she stoked the fireplace a few more times. The wind howled hollowly, rattling the windows. Cole thought she'd heard a rustling sound somewhere; she turned her head. There was nothing there.

The infant stared at her with stone black eyes, a crease marring his brows. A seam had opened between his lips.

It was still so quiet. There was only the wind, the fire, and the strange, rustling, hissing sound.

Cole put out the candles, and closed the curtains for the night.

s

The boy had been loud when he first came; he wasn't, now. The hunger silenced him; he had learnt to preserve his energy, by instinct. Petunia rather thought it was because he never received anything he shouted for. Petunia thought it was a good thing the boy no longer shouted.

In the first few days, there had been words. "Mummy." "Mama." "Daddy." "Paddie." Something like "wormy."

The boy would not stop calling for what he could not have.

After that, there were screams and cries.

Now the boy no longer talked, or made a sound at all; he stared, and his eyes that tracked her movements up and down the hallway didn't belong to him. Lily stared from behind those green depths, a wordless ghost, and Petunia screamed for her to _shut up_.

 _"Ma - "_

She didn't see the boy for three days. Her Dudley (who was good, who hadn't learnt to talk yet but would in, she believed, a short while) demanded her attention more.

When she opened the cupboard door three days later, his eyes were closed.

That was the last time the boy made a sound, for a long time to come.

-s-

ii. - _somnium_

He passed through the house, unseen; but sometimes, Dudley saw him.

Sometimes it was sunny in Little Whinging, and Harry ached on those days. The sun gave him no shadows to hide in. The sun was Harry's enemy.

They had rounded a corner of the quiet street, into a dead end. Petunia was out, shopping; Harry remembered the last time Dudley _saw_ him and _found_ him, and his stomach turned with remembered pain.

Harry read stories sometimes, stories Dudley discarded about the house, stories that leaked through the seams of his door that Petunia told, and there was one, before Petunia burnt it, that talked of a Prince who could pass through a land as if he were a ghost, whisking his Princess away to a better life.

Harry wished he were that prince.

Dudley advanced on him, fist raised. Between the shadow and a solar flare, Harry thought _"don't see me"_ and Dudley's fist connected with thin air.

Later, Dudley caught up to him, and Harry could not cook.

There was no length of time to be defined. He was too young for the concept of days.

s

A ring of six crowded him, an Arthurian formation; Tom stood in the centre and fashioned himself King.

Jack Jones wasn't happy that Tom had grown to an age where Tom warranted half a room, the half Jack thought should be his. Jack didn't want Tom to be there. Jack wanted Tom to disappear.

It was a King's duty to grant a Knight's wish, this was Tom's thought before he smiled.

In the time between a child's version of a battle cry and a flash of Tom's eyes, Tom was _gone_ , and Jack screamed as his bones shattered on stone.

When the matron hurried around a corner, there was only the sobbing Jones, a bloodied wall, and the wary stares of Tom's Knights. They weren't Knights _yet_ ; but they would be, one day.

One day, the whole world would see him; being invisible for an instant was a small price to pay.

"What did you do, Riddle?" In Ms. Cole's office, someone asked over Jones's howls.

"I didn't do anything."

Tom never gave anything but the truth.

-s-

iii. - _morsus_

Peter Moss passed away in the night. Causes unknown, save for two dark holes on his left ankle, and the outing he took two days ago with the rest of the children, when he had a dispute with Tom over a forgotten silver chain in the grass.

Nagini wound herself tighter around Tom's arm, in the dark.

 _Don't worry, they won't see you_ , Tom said in their mother tongue that no one else could know.

s

Harry Potter set a boa on his cousin on his eleventh birthday.

-s-

iv. - _gemina_

 _"It is very curious indeed that that you should be destined for this wand when its brother - why, its brother gave you that scar. I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter..."_ Ollivander said in a shadowy shop the first day Harry stepped foot in the world that would bring him his fate.

s

A shower of green and silver sparks later, Tom embraced his destiny. It came from the mouth of an enigmatic old man in a grimy shop, whose silvery, moon-like eyes and whispered words pointed Tom to a future he never realized.

"You will accomplish great things, Tom Riddle - terrible, perhaps, but great."

Tom thought he rather agreed.

-s-

v. - _imperfectum_

Warren Myrtle dropped to the cold tiles of the second floor bathroom when Tom was sixteen.

s

Draco Malfoy collapsed in a pool of his own blood on the tiles of the second floor bathroom when Harry Potter was sixteen.

He would have bled to death, had Severus Snape not saved him.

s

There had been no one to save Warren Myrtle.

-s-

vi. - _tris_

Tom Riddle had cast two of the three Unforgivable Curses before he turned eighteen.

He spent his first Curse of Death on his father. Tom could never have settled for being a _Jr_. to anyone on this earth, and he shed his heritage in a swish of his wand.

He cast it thrice, to destroy what was left of his living family.

He spent his first _Imperius_ on the Ministry official who came to investigate the crime.

He didn't employ the _Cruciatus_ until far, far later; he found it distasteful, at the time.

s

Harry Potter had cast two of the three Unforgivable Curses before he turned eighteen.

He spent his first _Cruciatus_ on the woman who dared take his only living family from him. He cast it twice more, for killing the Master of his true Home, and for insulting the Head of the House that took him in, after ten years of wandering.

He cast the Imperius thrice. The first time, there was a pause; the second time, he didn't hesitate. He never hesitated, after that.

-s-

vii. - _nidus_

 _Hogwarts will always be home_ , Harry Potter thought as he marched towards what could have been his death.

s

Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known, Voldemort thought as he walked away from the snow-piled grounds one winter night in 1956, to immortality.

And now it will always be home.

The Diadem of Ravenclaw glinted in the deepest heart of the castle, in the gloom.


End file.
